If deity is denied - or, nowadays, not so much 'denied' as ruled-out a priori on the basis of unexamined and unacknowledged metaphysical assumptions regarding the nature of reality...

Without deity then Life devolves to how we feel about life, currently; and therefore all possible problems devolve to therapy - because the solution to all possible problems is to change how we feel about them. Full stop - nothing more to be said.

And, changing how we feel about things is not innocuous; because it includes the possibility of Not-feeling. IN other worlds any and all problems can be solved temporarily by obliterating feelings; perhaps by obliterating awareness, obliterating The Self; maybe with drugs, surgery or some other technology...

Or we abolish feelings by death. Because without deity - death is the end of consciousness.

So all possible problems can permanently be solved by death...

Further, all problems can be prevented - by never being alive in the first place. Prevention of life.

So the therapeutic society is continually sliding down a slippery slope towards the idea of universal and permanent extinction of Life, as the one sure way of preventing suffering.

Death is the ultimate therapy for everything!

OR - if that sounds... wrong to you; then you might discover and reconsider your metaphysical assumptions which lead to that conclusion; then re-examine the possibility of deity?...

(From my personal experience...) Atheists think it is absurd and irrational when religious people talk about eternal life beyond death as necessary for a meaning in life; because if this mortal life lacks meaning, then why would a mathematical extension of it provide meaning?

(For atheists...) It is like multiplying zero - no matter how many times it is multiplied then it is still nothing. If mortal life has zero meaning then in can't be increased by duration; but if mortal life does have a meaning then there is no absolute necessity for eternal life. ('One life is enough!...')

From an atheist metaphysical perspective, that is - with atheist assumptions that a human life is, objectively, simply an incident in biological history, this argument appears irrefutable.

But if we take a religious perspective which assumes that reality was created, for a reason, by a deity who is our father - then we begin with a picture of a vast and unfolding story, stretching across 'eternity', in which we are participants. For Christians we are - by a family metaphor - both individuals and members of this story: personally concerned for our-selves and also for others.

From this perspective, mortal life has two aspects - the first is that one human lifespan - whether 7 minutes or seventy years - it is of microscopic duration compared with the timescales involved in the great story of creation (indeed, if eternity stretches without end - a lifespan is, relatively, of near-zero duration).

So mortal life requires consideration in the perspective of eternity in order properly to understand it. In other words, the atheist has misframed the question - because he is viewing eternity from the perspective of mortality - assuming the validity of the finite span of mortality and challenging the validity of an eternal perspective; when the correct procedure is the opposite way around.

But on the other side, Christians ought to remember that mortality was also experienced by Jesus Christ - and this indicates that the experience of mortality (however brief in comparison with eternity) is very important, presumably necessary, for the fulfilment of the divine story.

Non-Christian religions are often good at explaining the eternal perspective, and arguing in favour of an eternal perspective which shrinks (sometimes to microscopic levels) the importance of mortal life. But they tend to have trouble explaining why mortal life is of any value at all: why bother with it?

Mainstream Orthodox Christians also often have the same trouble - but this is not intrinsic to Christianity, but is a consequence of building-in inappropriate Greco-Roman derived philosophy, and then seeing Christianity through its lens.

The clarity of the Gospels should remind us that mortal life needs to be understood in a divine and eternal context - that life-on-earth is a relatively brief and temporary phase; but also that even the briefest of mortal lives is also vitally important both to our personal selves and also to the great plan of things.

Thursday, 29 June 2017

Modern man must believe of anything that exists, that it has come gradually into being, that it has 'evolved'.

By and large, modern Man can no longer accept an hypothesis of instantaneous creation; and there is little doubt that, consciously or subconsciously, he applies that as much to his own individuality as to anything else.

If belief in his own existence is to involve believing that he was created at, or immediately before, his physical birth, he will abandon that belief - and he will have good reasons for doing so.

Edited from Self and Reality, in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays, by Owen Barfield (1977).

Barfield is surely correct in his observation of modern metaphysics - there is an inbuilt assumption that things 'gradually come into being'. Among mainstream Christians who have noticed this, such an assumption is typically regarded as necessarily a secular corruption, and there is an attempt to restore a pre-modern (medieval) metaphysics of instantaneous creation from nothing.

But for both Barfield (an Anthroposophist) and myself (a believer in Mormon theology), the 'modern' evolutionary thinking is correct, and in its essence an aspect of the spiritual progression of Man.

For both Anthroposophists and Mormons; the pre-modern belief is instantaneous creation is seen as an error, inherited from pre-Christian classical philosophy.

By 'evolution' is Not, of course, meant the purposeless evolution of Darwinian natural selection; but evolution in its original (and primary) meaning of a purposive and developmental unfolding towards a goal.

The implication is that each us us has an existence stretching back into pre-mortal life. For Barfield, this pre-existence was one of several incarnations with periods of spirit life in between - in which incarnations began as diffuse and spiritual, and became more solid and embodied. (The future envisaged was one of further progressive incarnations, eventually leading to full deity.)

For Mormons; pre-existence began with some kind of primordial consciousnesses, a stage of being spirit children of God, then a chosen incarnation into this mortal life. (The future envisaged is of a post-mortal resurrected eternal life, with ultimate potential for full and embodied deity.)

A belief in pre-existence - that we each, each of us, lived as spirit children of God, before being incarnated in mortal bodies to experience death, and thereby enable resurrection - is a metaphysical assumption that has potential to make a very large and positive difference to Christian life: it is an assumption that overcomes some of the stumbling-blocks and solves many of the deepest problems and paradoxes experienced by modern Christians.

*

Much more on this vital theme can be read inWhen
Souls Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought by Terryl Givens, 2009.

If you haven't yet had a look at The Genius Famine, it is very cheaply available, properly formatted, on Kindle; or can be seen in a text version (suitable for copying, pasting, editing and printing) at:

Tuesday, 27 June 2017

A couple of days ago my home city was the number one headline news item in the world because of mass media lying with strategically evil intent.

Of course, this kind of thing is part of the daily diet of corruption and inversion which we are fed by globally-coordinated, demonically-inspired dishonesty; but the instance is instructive because the evil intent is so obvious and the consequences so widespread.

What actually happened is that a (still un-named, apparently) black African Muslim woman attended Eid celebrations at a mosque with family; then afterwards badly lost control of the car she was driving and ran into several of the other worshippers, badly injuring them.

A horrible accident.

And all this was instantly known by everybody at the event and by the police who later arrived and arrested the woman.

But instead, what was headlined - internationally, immediately, stereotypically - words presumably deriving from some combination of the police and mass media - was the likes of: "Car 'ploughs into families' near Newcastle Mosque", "6 injured as car hits crowd celebrating Eid in the UK", "Two children fighting for their lives after car hits crowd during Eid celebrations".

And at some point in the articles, the phase was used - 'not terror related' or not 'believed' to be terror related - which was, of course, always known for sure from the very beginning.

So - if this was an accident, happening in a field among Sunday worshippers, since it was known for sure not to be terror related, and to have been perpetrated by a co-worshipper - then why was it featured the number one international headline news?

To do harm, by calculated misrepresentation - clearly.

What actually happened was not international news; but what was deliberately implied by the headlines was. This headlining, and prominence accorded the story, is not just 'irresponsible' - by contrast such contrivance is fully-responsible, and carefully calculated harm-doing.

The reason is in what the headlines don't say - and what the fact of them being headlines implies, in a context of several recent deliberate so-called terrorist attacks on pedestrians by religiously or politically motivated drivers.

The mass media are using the fact that shocking headlines create a lasting psychological impact which is not undone by later revisions or additions; even when these revisions or additions occur later in the article - but especially not undone when modifications or corrections occur some hours or days later.

In my book on the mass media, Addicted to Distraction, I call this 'First-strike framing' of news:

Of course, most people - around the world - will see or read only the headline - and draw the apparently obvious, but known to be false, conclusions. Because the false conclusions have been engineered, this is the very worst kind of lie: the deliberately-misleading but deniable dishonesty.

The mass media are thereby - quite deliberately, and in a planned and coordinated fashion, and in harmonious cooperation with other institutions and bureaucracies - stoking-up an agenda of fear, resentment and conflict, in the UK and internationally.

How evil is that? Very evil indeed - and let's not all get so blase and cynical that we fail to notice the fact.

The media take a known accident, perpetrated by someone who is obviously not a terrorist; but treat the story in every way as if it was a terror incident. Consequently, people understand and remember this event as if it had been a terror incident.

But for the Global Establishment, this is all in a day's work; quite normal; quite usual - it is the mass media's mainstream modus operandi...

Monday, 26 June 2017

The basic and original situation in created reality was (and is) one of harmony and power - it is our destiny (the gift of God - if we choose to accept it) to become participants in this harmony and power.

Our worldly-goals - even if we do get them - always turn-out to be infrequent, transient, unsatisfying.

Nobody pursuing worldly goals ever gets his hands on real power - primary power - the power of creation: including never getting the power to attain genuine, lasting, pervasive gratification, fulfilment, meaning and purpose - of being at home in reality.

(Satan, an unincarnated spirit, has no such power; but is a tormented soul who can only work by corruption of existent creation - to destroy that which is, and is good.)

This is a safety feature - since we (as we are) would certainly abuse real, primary power if we could grasp it - we would destroy the divine harmony between free agent beings; so creation was set-up so that is impossible - power comes only with Love: the two are attained together or not at all.

In sum: we cannot access primary power except by working from our true (divine) selves with motivation of Love; but if,or when, or insofar as this pre-requisite is attained then we may indeed work with the primary power of ultimate creation.

Real power exists for us in proportion to how aligned we are with divine purpose and its harmony. The true nature of our Will is not in 'forcing' reality to conform to our worldly appetites but in knowing and (voluntarily, with Love) aligning ourselves with the divine harmony and hopes.

This is what lies behind such phenomena as synchronicity (the alignment of multiple complex strands of reality, over time, to create positive situations for our potential personal benefit); also by what seems like luck, patterns, cycles, and stories as they apply to our lives.

This mortal life is for our education - we are to be educated by experiences; and the main thing we are intended to be educated in is the qualities of Life - which we know imperfectly as both positive and negative phenomena such as love, fear, hope, despair, affection, hatred and so forth - all these must, eventually, be understood; and to understand them requires experience.

But how do we understand?

There is an inner and outer communication. The main inner communication is by imagination. We can consider imagination to be a full, inner grasping of reality: to know something we must imaginatively-inhabit it. Imagination (properly understaood) is indeed the primary and ultimate experience of knowing.

But sometimes a purely inner stimulus does not suffice, and we need to have the lesson impressed upon us by the physical outer world; sometimes we need to know something as an objective experience (perceptible to others as well as to ourselves). These lessons from the physical world are slow to emerge, and simple in their nature - but these 'harsh lessons' (as they feel to us) may be compelling in a way that, in practice, is necessary to improve the possibility of our learning from them.

(Of course we can always resist learning! No matter how many lessons, or how harsh the lessons may be - people can, and do, choose not to learn them. Nonetheless, God does not give-up on us; but gives us chance after chance to learn what is vital to our eternal progression - so long as we allow him.)

Thus, primary divine power works to reproduce in our surroundings a real life picture of our situation - of the situation of our mortal life on earth. The drama of each of our lives is a way we can perceive and learn what we most need.

Our real-true-divine Will is therefore always spontaneously working-away - often against our superficial, selfish, worldly will - to enact in our environment the drama of our own being, and its requirements; typically in a slow, simple, heavy-handed and linear fashion.

On the other hand, we can in principle learn these necessary lessons much more rapidly, simultaneously, and less painfully if we can learn-to-learn-from imagination - in the spiritual realm.

(The above is a paraphrase of an argument in the chapter The Will in William Arkle's book A Geography of Consciousness, 1974 - esepcially page 212.)

Sunday, 25 June 2017

Yesterday I enjoyed a family walk through the early summer woods in the North Tyne Valley - and managed to maintain myself in a Peak Experience state for an unusually long period (about half an hour) during which I was able to consider some important matters. I made some notes shortly afterwards.

One thing that was crystal clear was that there is a way-out, a way to overcome the current situation [of evil triumphant in the world]. This for sure - and it was something simple which could really happen. I don't know what it is - but knew that [specific details] would/ will be clear in the relevant context [i.e. when needed] - so long as I (we) think in the real-true-divine way. It is also clear that this way was not by perceptible politics, or organisation, or rhetoric - but something operating at a higher level, invisible to senses. Asif, an act of thinking could put it to rights. A single act.

When I get insights during a peak experience, I assume that these are in some sense true and certain; and PE-insights trump the kind of insights I might get when in a lower state of consciousness.

(Peak Experiences are glimpses of reality - and 'everyday consciousness is a liar' - as Colin Wilson used to say.)

So I am going to regard the above as a certainty - or, at least, that is my aim.

It is not very precise, at present; but it describes what I should do, and what I should not do - and that is enough.

Saturday, 24 June 2017

I am interested by the Native American church (aka Peyote Religion) which seems to be a Christian church that includes aspects of traditional Amerindian religions with a more recent use of the (midly) hallucinogenic peyote cactus.

I like the sound of this church, and I am delighted by the fact that Christianity can arise and thrive in so many different forms; but the internet sources all seem tainted by political correctness. Significantly, the Native American Church itself does not seem to have an official internet presence; which perhaps suggests it is a mystery religion restricted to initiates.

Anyway; my 'bleg' is for any reliable and sympathetic 'insider' sources on the Native American church, preferably from before 1965 and without a 'progressive' axe to grind.

*

One interesting aspect of this church is the use of peyote to attain a psychological state in which the participants can directly apprehend the spirit world.

My interpretation of this is that modern Indians (since the 19th century, at least) seem to need a consciousness-altering drug to do what earlier generations did spontaneously. And peyote, by itself is insufficient - the ceremony seems to last many hours, with arduous dancing, perhaps fasting and using other psychoactive substances such as tobacco.

This would fit with the general pattern of mainstream societies who have experienced a withdrawal of the spirit realm - although Westerners are even further down that line, and most of us would not have a convincing (life transforming) religious experience even if we used peyote; probably because the other, tribally-bonded aspects of the ceremony would be ineffective.

I think people may have become so excited by the name-calling convenience of the term 'virtue-signalling' that they have missed the Main Thing about what is going-on; which is that it is not 'virtue' being signalled; that this is in truth anti-virtue signalling.

Modern virtue-signalling is in reality signalling the inversion of virtue.

Up to fifty-ish years ago (but you'd need to go back more than a century in the case of upper class intellectuals); virtue-signalling was advertising traditional virtues such as Christian faith, altruism, kindness, charitableness, prudence, courage and so forth.

What was wrong with old virtue-signalling - for a Christian - was that it was 'hypocritical' in a Biblical sense (the sense by which the Pharisees were hypocritical; of falsely-claiming actually to live by the highest standards professed. It was the false claim that was wrong - not the standards).

But with traditional virtue-signalling, the actual virtues being-signalled were indeed virtuous...

However, in contrast, the 'virtues' that are being signalled now, in our modern world of political correctness, are almost-wholly straightforward vices and sins; or abstract evil-in-practice principles - such as equality, diversity, or social justice.

So the real point about modern so-called virtue-signalling is that is an advertisement of, and propaganda-for, moral corruption.

Modern virtue-signalling is of achieved self-corruption in the sense of endorsing up-ended transcendental values of truth, beauty, and virtue in unity; and a recommendation that others become similarly corrupted.

Modern virtue-signalling is therefore celebrating and promoting tendentious dishonesty, ugliness and short-termist materialist selfishness (mashed-together in a metaphysically-incoherent mess).

That's why modern virtue-signalling is not merely hypocrisy: it is actively evil.

Originally, Men simply perceived and believed the suprasensory reality - they saw and heard the voices of spirits, gods and demons...

Then the world became more confined to perception by the five senses. The spirit reality could only be perceived as a result of special rituals. First there were shamans who specialised in contacting the spirit realm, then there were priests...

Now the spirit reality is so remote to us that we cannot perceive it at all, except in altered states of consciousness such that our consciousness, our self of self awareness, is suppressed - by drug intoxication, disease, in sleep... When we are awake, alert and in clear consciousness we live in a world of five senses merely, from which spirits, gods and demons are absent.

*

But we are supposed to be aware of spirit reality by a different means - not by passive sensory perception but by active direct knowing.

Instead we live in an age of passive delusion: people do, in fact, believe without sensory evidence, they believe in what is Not actually perceived or/ or is contradicted by experience. That is the delusional 'virtual world' of modern mainstream reality - enforced by officialdom, mass media and large institutions...

But what modern mainstream people believe is not merely false because self-contradicting, but also frequently changing; this being sustained by an incoherent brew of metaphysical assumptions of 'relativism', individualism, biological reductionism, abstract imprecise principles and imperatives (Justice, Equality, Diversity...) and the inaccessibility of real-reality and true-truth...

The one thing moderns know they know, deep down - is that they do not really know...

Modern man is therefore, and rightly, alienated from the world, from other people, and even from himself and his own thoughts: he doubts everything, including his doubts - and he fears.

(Alienation is our friend - it is the divine inner guidance system telling us we are on the wrong track utterly - not merely unhappy but living under false assumptions and in false delusions.)

Modern Man's only release is in seeking un-consciousness: oblivion in distraction or pleasure. His great 'hope' is therefore to cease to be a Man, to revert to animal un-self-consciousness...

*

In principle, modern Men are right to live in 'delusions' - in the sense that we are meant to know without external evidence; to know by direct apprehension. That is the evolutionary destiny.

But we must live by 'true delusions' - that is, by the intuitive insights of our own real selves - not those fake delusions of multiple, contradictory, labile and socially/ media created selves...

Man's destiny is to be free and agent, like God: as a god. To know everything, incrementally and asymptotically, from our selves thinking. Because true thinking is reality, because it is divine.

We must know by active and true thinking; not by passive absorption.

*

A hunter gatherer walked through life seeing and hearing spirits, they took this for granted; and were passive in relation to the spirit world; they assumed it was 'out there' and its meanings were 'out there' - not knowing that spirits are not just out-there but also in-here, and we participate in them.

(Man is necessary for reality.)

Modern Man cannot see spirits, and assumes that because they are not merely out-there, then they are nowhere! - yet he also assumes that what is believes is not really real. Modern Man is trapped by his metaphysical assumptions in a loop of nihilism and despair.

We are meant to walk through life not perceiving but directly knowing the reality of spirits (and many other things out-with sensory phenomena); knowing more-and-more of the reality of things without any ultimate bounds to that knowledge - while aware of our real selves; alert and in clear consciousness.

SO - do not expect to see spirits and other 'supernatural' phenomena out-there and 'objective' - instead expect to know spirits, angels, demons, God: know directly; that is simply by thinking properly, from our (true) selves.

And in such thinking we will (quite naturally and spontaneously) know for ourselves and by direct experience what is real and relevant.

Friday, 23 June 2017

If you wish to attain a higher 'consciousness' in life - by which I mean to experience, perceive and understand more than the five senses 'reality' of mainstream modern materialism; then you will already know that while higher consciousness is attainable in moments (aka 'peak experiences'), these moments tend spontaneously to be infrequent and last only seconds; and trying to make such moments longer and more frequent, and ideally continuous, is very difficult indeed.

(This goal of enhanced being was the major focus of Colin Wilson's thought; throughout dozens of books from The Outsider of 1956 to Super Consciousness in 2009, at the beginning and end of his publishing career.)

Another thing you might realise is that what works for one person seems seldom to work for another person. The history of those who have (apparently) attained higher consciousness is a history of different individuals with different experiences.

The lesson is that There Are No Shortcuts - the path is usually long, and each person seems to need a different path (presumably because each is, in fact, starting somewhere different).

To illustrate this, you may wish to give an hour and a half of intense attention to this recording of one of the most 'enlightened' men of whom I am aware - William Arkle.

Near the end, he responds to some questions from the audience (from the well known investigator Nigel Blair, who was the host of these proceedings) concerning whether meditation was necessary for everyone and beneficial for everyone. Arkle is very definite, even somewhat harsh, in refusing to make universal recommendations or even 'hints' or 'tips'; or to imply that there are quicker and easier ways to get where you need to go.

Each of us has to struggle, because these things are difficult to learn, because they are meant to be difficult to learn.

Because without the struggle we will not really learn them.

Note: To clarify, for new readers: Arkle is a spiritual Christian - not a New Age writer. His understanding is based upon God as Creator and Loving Father, we being his children; creation being for the purpose of raising us - like Jesus Christ - to ultimate full divinity of the same kind as God. Unorthodox Christian elements in Arkle include that - as with Mormonism - Arkle envisages a Heavenly Mother consort with the Father, and human divinity as potentially rising tothe same nature and level as that of the divine parents, But unlike Mormonism; Arkle also includes a scheme of incremental reincarnation (whereas Mormonism achieves much the same explanatory function by positing a significant and evolutionary pre-mortal spirit existence for all men and women).http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk

Six billion of the population are therefore sustained by the global system of technology, organisation and trade that we call Western Civilisation - and thus includes all of the 'third world/ developing' nations where population growth is so rapid.

For example, without Western civilisation (including medicine and public health) Africa would have less than a tenth of current population.

And of course Western Civilisation is going to end, and probably quite soon - for many, many reasons not least of which is that the majority of the world, including the global establishment, are extremely hostile to it - and to that which created and sustained it.

This means that billions of people will almost-certainly die, quite soon - although exactly how many billions and how rapidly is merely a question of how long the shrinking remnant can live-off accumulated, but also shrinking, capital stores.

However; 'civilisation' is (quite rightly) nobody's priority to sustain - not least because it is a by-product rather than a strategy; and is anyway a very long-term and remote problem - so it will always be made a low priority in competition with so many others.

The big question is not If there will be a collapse of technology and trade and a colossal extinction event; but why it has not already happened - given the malign intentions of the most powerful people in the world.

The answer is simple, albeit ominous.

The Global Establishment is - grudgingly - maintaining the international system of trade and technology because they are engaged in spiritual warfare, and they are currently winning.

In a nutshell, the Global Establishment are ultimately tools of the supernatural powers of evil - and because evil is winning more and more souls to self-damnation, they want the system to continue... at least for a while longer.

Think of it this way: Billions are going to die for sure - but what is in doubt is the fate of these souls: will they accept the salvation offered by Christ, or will they choose to reject this gift and instead opt for damnation?

Everything currently indicates that more and more people (most obviously in the West - where moral inversion is official and dominant; but seemingly almost everywhere else too - by their behaviour) are motivated by fear, resentment, pride and despair.

In such a state of conviction, the mass of post-mortem souls will not want Heaven, will purposively reject salvation... Certainly they won't want it at the necessary and inevitable price of personal repentance and faith (including admitting they had been fundamentally wrong in mortal life, and then actively joining with God's eternal plan for our deification).

What this suggests is that it is only the wickedness of the world which is keeping it going, and postponing the billion-fold die-off; and if there are strong signs of a Christian awakening in the hearts of Men, then that will be the time that the demons pull-the-plug on the vast, multiply-interdependent and therefore exquisitely fragile system that we call the global economy.

The mass death will come sooner or later, whatever happens - because its causes are probably unstoppable but in any case not being stopped - yet it may perhaps come sooner if many people do the right thing, than if they don't.

In which case there may be a stark choice between either extending this-world survival coupled with the expectation of an increased rate of eternal damnation; or alternatively accepting rapid collapse and death as the cost of saving more souls for eternal happiness...

Wednesday, 21 June 2017

The US and UK elections were wildly wrongly predicted, and so have been many other recent elections. Why?

Firstly there is so much systematic dishonesty that nobody knows anything anymore. Most obviously, the process of opinion polling is now very obviously corrupt - designed to influence voting, rather than measure it. It has become actively-misleading.

But also people, including political leaders, are more stupid than they used to be. The recent UK General Election was the easiest to win of any I can recall in the past 45 years - all that the Conservatives needed to do was make it a single issue election about Brexit; stating that they were the only party that would deliver it.

This was so very obvious that it didn't really cross my mind that it would not happen - but it didn't; and the election degenerated into a confusing mess; with the building impression that the Conservatives were unsure about Brexit and everything else.

The election ended-up so close that today the Revolutionary Left are planing a coup (they have announced it in the press) to take-over the government in the next days or weeks; by organising disruption, violent riots, a crisis atmosphere and fear of civil breakdown.

With such an incompetent and cowardly mainstream leadership class in Britain - the Bolshevik Left may well succeed (even if the leadership class didn't covertly want them to win - which is another aspect) - and we may soon have our first de facto communist government.

The unknown factor is the British people - and whether they will wake-up now; or perhaps later, after the reality of totalitarianism begins to hit; or perhaps not at all. After all, Leftism is our national Achilles heel - driven by class, sex, race and anti-Christian ressentiment; and we have so far shown zero ability to learn from experience on that subject.

If people really do not want to become agent and free - then they will get their wish.

That is: a life of mental passivity, of total surveillance and micro-managed behaviour and thought; justified purely in terms of the balance of attributed pleasures or sufferings; hoping desperately that the masters of our mortal destiny will be kind, while dreading that they are, in fact, cruel.

Tuesday, 20 June 2017

Modern people cannot even imagine a society of beauty, truth and virtue - because they do not believe, acknowledge or posses these values.

Instead, moderns can only imagine dystopias - and the dystopias are merely exceptionally-cruel societies where there is more-than-current levels of deliberately imposed suffering - the implication is that a 'utopia' is a society without suffering, of constant pleasure merely.

A Utopia of Emotions.

I say emotions, not feelings, because feelings imply consciousness, self-awareness - and in any modern utopia that must be destroyed - because consciousness implies worries about the past and (especially) future - whereas the modern utopia is the obliteration of everything by current pleasure.

The modern utopia is thus indistinguishable from the modern dystopia of a transhumanist, cyborg/ cyberpunk society in which human-machine, technologically-enhanced entities dwell in a paradise of genetic engineering, plastic surgery and drugs...

It will be noticed that the modern utopia is not a genuine utopia because it is not a human society - at most, it is the society of ex-humans, who have destroyed their own consciousness in order to obliterate suffering and thereby experience the totality of current pleasure.

Monday, 19 June 2017

To understand the meaning of Jesus Christ is a lifetime's work, and more than a mortal life!

One aspect that has been occupying me recently is what I term the 'cosmic' aspect - in other words the difference that the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ made for objective Reality.

I mean the sense in which 'things'everywhere and for everyone are intrinsically different AD from BC.

In other words, what differences did Jesus make aside from what we know of his life and teachings from inspired scriptures, tradition and the church (amplified by reason)?

One helpful concept is that since the death of Jesus and/ or the coming of the Holy Ghost (Pentecost) we have had Christ within-us; as a universal inner guidance system.

This means that, in principle - and perhaps necessarily also in practice - Anno Domini Christ is universally available and knowable by some kind of process of introspection and intuition; and available even to those who have not learned anything via there five senses (or who have been taught false things about him).

So, Christ is outside and inside, without and within, knowable by prayer and by meditation.

Furthermore, this kind of direct knowledge of Christ is probably both necessary and indeed sufficient for our understanding of The Gospels. What I mean is that the Gospels cannot be understood without the correct attitude and perspective for reading the Gospels - and also when the correct A & P have been established by direct knowing; then that is enough for us to understand the Gospels (not immediately in total - but to begin to build a correct understanding).

So the reality and nature of Christ is established in such a way that everybody, everywhere, can (in principle) can confirm their prayers via intuitions and vice versa. Can know the guidance both from without and from within.

And this is exactly what we need in a life of growth, development and transformation. We change, and are meant to change; and the agent of change can work from inside us as well as from outside us.

Sunday, 18 June 2017

Take a step back from what - at least in the UK - is an explicit, unfolding, centrally-planned attempt at an extreme Leftist Revolutionary takeover from the Mainstream Leftists currently in charge.

(Note - ALL mainstream politics is Leftist, including all conservative, libertarian and nationalist parties. Because the only alternative to Leftism is religion: for the West that means a society based on Christianity. The Left - both mainstream and revolutionary - are the preferred means by which the global Establishment are working for a world totalitarian society of pervasive surveillance and micro-management; and the objective of this

(My assumption here is that this is ultimately a spiritual warfare; there is indeed an elite conspiracy; and at the very top this has been for several generations strategised by forces of supernatural evil - I mean actual demons. Their aim is, of course, the wholesale self-damnation of as many people as possible; by implementing an agenda which inverts Good.)

Revolution is, after all, a high risk strategy - especially in the context that the Leftists are winning, winning and winning... and have been for fifty years...

I don't mean that failing to win a revolution is the high risk; the extreme Left might well win.

And I don't mean that a revolution will (it usually does) produce economic collapse, state violence, breakdown of law, starvation, disease and all the rest of it.

(Sooner or later, for bad reasons or good, collapse will come.)

I mean spiritually - a revolution, perhaps especially a successful revolution, is quite likely to trigger a clarification of perception of reality, serious thinking; and is the most likely thing I can imagine to lead to a spiritual and religious awakening.

So why has the Global Establishment abandoned a winning strategy?

In principle - it could be for one of two opposite reasons.

From strength. The Left is now so secure that it can massively accelerate its agenda.

If that is the case, and the Left have nothing to fear then really there is nothing can be done about it: we have passed the point of no return.

But this hasty revolution could also be a product of weakness...

The Establishment masters of the Left may have been panicked into premature revolution, before the ground has been fully prepared; because they fear that their agenda is under threat.

This current crescendo of revolutionary rhetoric against the may derive from fear rather than strength - it may be a huge gamble.

If so, we are not past the tipping point - but instead things hang in the balance.

What does this imply for Christians? Well, we know that, in times like these large forces are at work behind the scenes; such that small, local, personal, courageous acts of faith may lead to huge and spiritually beneficial consequences.

It is time to be brave. Sooner or later your moment will come - the testing time when you will be called upon to declare witness, make a stand, some seemingly tiny personal act that - if you but knew - is actually of massive potential consequence.

Friday, 16 June 2017

One of the problems for self-styled Rightists is a shocking ignorance of Leftism. I'm not even talking about the centuries long historical perspective, but simply Leftism over the past century - back to the time of my grandparents.

A common consequence of this is the common wrong Rightist idea that Leftism is a religion.

Now, of course there are some respects in which Leftism is somewhat like a religion - but the falsity of the idea that it was a religion would be obviously untrue to anyone who knew what Leftism was like in the early Twentieth century as well as knowing what it has been (increasingly) like in the past fifty years.

It was not so daft to regard Communism as a religion - and like a real religion, the first generation of communists were often very highly motivated to the point of extreme courage and self-sacrifice.

This early type of Leftism was economic, at root. It was about the distribution of wealth and income, economic planning, the ownership of the means of production and so forth.

In Britain (which is where Leftism was invented) many early Leftists (socialists) were Protestant nonconformists of extremely strict morality: sexual morality, and they did not lie, gamble or drink alcohol. Many were skilled native working class men - the Trades Unionists - dedicated to self-improvement by education in the sciences and high art: they founded lectures, libraries, funded colleges, promoted literacy...

Old style Leftism was wrong, and contained the seed of greater wrongness - but it had many good qualities, and many admirable people leading it.

Compare this with Leftism now. It is almost completely different in almost every respect: no longer based on economics but instead on identity politics, femimism, antiracism, promoting the sexual revolution. It was post-mid-sixties Leftist parties in Britain which most aggressively promoted the culture of gambling, drinking, promiscuity, marriage-and-family destruction, native population replacement, hype & spin (ie. systematic lying).

Leftist politics is now something which would have been utterly revolting to the old style, high minded communists, Christian socialists and Trades Unionists.

Religions don't behave this way. They are far more stable, and their decline is characterised by corruption and apostasy; but not near-total ideological and social reversal in the space of a generation! (say 1945-75 - of course the generations overlapped and blurred the phenomenon).

Indeed, one has to look deep to discover the commonality of the Left throughout its evolution - it is there, but it is not a surface feature, and not captured by a single core aim. (Indeed, I believe the Left can only plausibly be explained as a consequence of supernatural, demonic leadership - working gradually and incrementally to demoralise, corrupt and invert people over multiple generations. Human agency is incapable of such long-termism.)

I was brought up as an old style Leftist through my extended family; and avidly studied the history of the movement in my teens - and also, time-lagged, participated in the transformation of the Left as it happened from the middle sixties. So I can see that it is not any more a religion - it does not do what a religion does for people; in sum Leftism is now almost wholly oppositional.

A religion must have some fixity of metaphysics, doctrine, scripture, goals, tradition, church structure... something! Time has revealed that Leftism has no positive content - it is merely oppositional, inversional; and ultimately what Leftism opposes is The Good.

Owen Barfield regarded himself as doing a mixture of 'scientific/ empirical' and epistemological research - but to understand him I believe we need also to know (or infer) the fundamental, metaphysical assumptions which underpin and make sense of the rest.

By scientific/ empirical I mean especially Barfield's work on 'philology - the history of word meanings and their transformations; and what that history implies about the societies using the languages. And by epistemological I mean the philosophy of how we know, the basis or justification for understanding.

But underneath both of these are the metaphysical assumptions about the way that reality is 'set-up' - its structure, meaning, purpose etc; including what is our own personal stake in reality: e.g. Why we should care about this stuff! Why it is important to us individually and in what way?

I see a lot of this, especially online. The 'tough' people who talk about 'winning' against the mainstream Left: some even believe that they are winning, that the tide has turned...

They pour scorn upon those who do not 'fight' - because they seem to feel that they can - from where we are now, and with people as they are now - actually 'win'! And roll society back to some earlier stage a few or many generations ago (which was, itself, in fact, a transitional phase en route to current Leftism).

It is delusional nonsense, however well-meant. The Left is not losing, the Right is not winning - because there is no 'Right' in the mainstream of public discourse: None. At. All.

Because even when a genuinely non-Left (i.e. religious) group speaks in the public sphere, that aspect is filtered; such that what appears has moved the debate onto the core secular Left ground of 'utilitarianism' - the calculus of human pleasure or suffering in this mortal life.

So the Right (whether actual or self-styled) is just proposing a different means to the identical Leftist goal of a comfortable and stimulating mortal life - full-stop - nothing else matters...

Therefore all supposed 'victories' of the 'Right' are merely reinforcing the deep-Left agenda.

The Right is Not winning, Nothing substantive has changed, Pessimism is the only rational calculation.

Yes, we must always hope and must never despair...

But someone can only be optimistic about the socio-political probabilities if they are deluded about the pervasiveness, depth and inertia of present realities.

Thursday, 15 June 2017

I was an Outsider more than thirty years before I became a Christian - having read Colin Wilson's book in 1978. Wilson himself never became a Christian, despite getting very close to it in his first two books (The Outsider of 1956 and Religion and the Rebel the year after).

Why should this be? - why should the inner-motivated Man, who regards himself as set-apart (for good, or more often for ill), perhaps having an unusual destiny, the 'existentialist'... why should such a person fail to recognise that his only satisfactory terminus lies inthe truth of Christianity?

I think the reason is partly to do with the Outsider wishing to hold-onto his favourite vices (drink, drugs, promiscuous extra-marital sex and the like) but it is also the fault of Christianity - which has become identified exclusively with specific churches (with, quite often, each one stating that it uniquely holds the keys of salvation).

The Outsider sees Christianity as a choice of churches only. Now some Outsiders - such as GK Chesterton or TS Eliot - do find a home inside one of the established Christian churches (the Roman Catholic church being a favourite in the early 20th century). But they are clearly a minority.

There is insufficient awareness of the possibility of being Christian outside of any specific church. And/ or of becoming a Christian before, or without ever, joining a church.

For instance William Blake is an Outsider hero, and Blake was an absolutely devout and explicit and focused Christian in his Life and all-through his work. And (not 'but') Blake was a non-church Christian who was extremely unconventional/ heterodox/ heretical. Since Blake regarded himself as a solid and inspired and proselytising Christian outwith any church and with an unique set of convictions and practices; so too can any Outsider.

Furthermore, many churches conflate (link-inextricably-together) the possibility of believing in God, Christ and the immanence of God-in-all-things including ourselves (such as The Holy Ghost).

As that great non-church and heterodox Christian Rudolf Steiner said: to disbelieve in God is to be, in a real sense, insane; in other words, it is to disbelieve any possibility of coherence, meaning and purpose - which is to regard all of life as a delusion.

The reality and significance Christ is the only source of hope and ultimate happiness - all other religions are - if true, at their best and by their own account - miserable by comparison with Christianity.

And to deny God within us and the world is to live earthly life in a state of detachment - since we can only observe and never actually participate in reality: we can never know.

For an Outsider everything must, sooner or later, be tested by intuition in its widest and deepest sense; there must be a solid sense of personal conviction and relevance. With a church orientated Christianity, this is applied only to the question of whether a particular church is the one path to truth, reality and salvation.

Clearly, most Outsiders have the intuition that such claims are untrue, and therefore cannot and do not even wish to join a church for which they do not feel any such conviction.

But if existential conviction is the truest test, then it ought to be applied to sub-parts, and not merely to 'the whole package' as put forward by a specific church. Thus, an Outsider may be intuitively sure that there is a God who is creator.

He may additionally be sure that (in some vital sense) Jesus Christ is the Son of God and our saviour and central to our ultimate happiness (even though the exact meaning of the key terms is something he will need to strive to elucidate).

And the Outsider may also realise that his knowledge depends on there being something like the Holy Ghost - a divine spirit inside himself, and everybody else, and every-thing else - which makes possible true understanding and knowledge; and works over time to guide us to a more divine salvation.

Any Outsider who becomes a Christian is highly-likely to be heterodox, or regarded as heretical by many or most church members - but he ought not to be put-off by this: he should still become a Christian, simply because it is true (true in a real sense, albeit a sense that needs working-on).

Without Christianity, the Outsider is doomed to be merely a psychologist - since the most he can say in favour of anything is that it tends to make people happier... or at least to suffer less.

If the Outsider is to be able to use the concept of 'ought' then he needs to be a theist; and if he is to be someone who regards mortal life as important he needs to be Christian; and if he is to regard his own freedom and creativity as important, he needs to believe in the possibility of direct, unmediated contact with the divine.

What the Outsider gets from this kind of direct apprehension of the truth of Christianity; is great assistance in finding, sustaining and growing his true self - and then in discovering and pursuing his destiny.

He may well also become happier, more motivated and more confident in Life - but these are side-effects and never the primary aim.

In sum - the core reason for becoming a Christian is to convert an Outsider from being merely a Psychologist to becoming a real Prophet.

I am currently reading an extremely-long (14 volumes, each about 1000 pages) fantasy novel serial called the Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan (the pen name of James Oliver Rigney Jr. - 1948-2007) the totality of which was published between 1990 and 2013, having been posthumously completed by Brandon Sanderson.

I say 'reading' but in fact I am listening on audiobook - the readers are the husband and wife team of Michael Kramer and Kate Reading - who are first-rate exemplars of this difficult craft.

I came to Wheel of Time via the wonderful novels of Brandon Sanderson, who completed the series; and a further link is that Sanderson's audiobooks are also done by Kramer and Reading.

Apparently Jordan's The Wheel of Time is very well known in the USA, where it was a 'best seller' - that is not the case in the UK; where these books are not stocked by shops or libraries.

It is a large commitment to begin such a long haul, and I rather doubt whether I would have done it if I had had to read rather than listen; but I am delighted by the experience so far. First thing every morning, and doing doing chores, and at other times - I listen to the books and am transported into a vast world populated by numerous characters.

What I like best about the Wheel of Time is that the invisible authorial presence, behind and permeating the text, is one of a wise and good man. That makes a big difference for me; because I find most authors to be ultimately untrustworthy - most good writers are, indeed, bad Men. 'Robert Jordan' was clearly a fine person.

The structure of the narrative is more like a serial than a single multi-volume novel or sequence of linked novels; when there is such extreme length, the overall story is backgrounded, and functions mostly as a thread to join-up the various scenes, and from which to develop character. The books are capable of depicting beauty and horror, moving me to tears, making me laugh, and sustaining my attention and interest. As a prose stylist Jordan is therefore good-enough - but not great or special.

(Something similar applies to JK Rowling, and to several other major fiction writers such as Charles Dickens. Not all great novelists are great writers - and most great writers are not great novelists.)

Why is the book so very long? The main reason is that there is a large cast of characters - six main characters, but dozens of others from whose perspective we get to see things. The reason why the books are long is the detail - the scenes are described in more minute detail than I have come across elsewhere (except, significantly, in Brandon Sanderson - who I guess may have learned this from Jordan). Reading the scene therefore takes longer than the scene would take in real time - which is a 'Wagnerian' way of doing things.

(Wagner's operas, or at least the late ones, can be enjoyed only once it is understood that events on stage are happening in 'super-slow-mo'; the orchestra, not the voice, describing the smallest nuances of what the characters are thinking and feeling.)

The main strength of Wheel of Time is that it does extremely-well what Fantasy is supposed to do: it makes an inhabitable world in which the eternal and essential human things are dominant - a world of truth.

The importance of Fantasy is that the everyday modern world is one of lies and triviality; so people like myself almost need the Fantasy genre in order to 'exercise' the proper priorities and evaluations.

If you like the sound of what I have indicated, then I would recommend Jordan's Wheel of Time. Don't think of it as being 'like' some other author. WoT does what it does supremely well - and it is a delight to be able to enjoy it day after day, week after week, month after month... and still not have reached the halfway mark!

Wednesday, 14 June 2017

In the unprecedented event of a man with a knife killing people as fast as he can; we simply run away and hide until a policeman comes along to shoot him.

This might take quarter of an hour in the centre of London, ten or twenty times as long elsewhere. And only fit (and lucky) adults can successfully run and hide…

But the knifeman can only kill so-fast those unhidden who are unlucky, unfit, women, children and old people; and the police will, eventually, arrive.

Of course if the killer has a gun and plenty of bullets then a lot more people will be killed while we wait for the police – but that is unfortunately necessary; because it is better than the alternative of people defending themselves.

It’s perfectly simple – the government has a strategy to import extremely large numbers of people including a substantial proportion who will cause violence; and another parallel strategy to make self-defence high-risk and harshly-punishable.

The obvious answer is to have an extremely large number of armed police everywhere, at all times; total surveillance and micro-control of the entire population’s thoughts and actions. Problem solved!

Of course, some anti-diversity, Christian fundamentalist Right-wing white supremacist fascist Nazi literally-Hitler extremists would object to that state of affairs – but the answer to that problem is obvious as well…

I call for an awakening in The West, because people are asleep. Just look around: look at the eyes.

People sleep through life, which means they never actually think from themselves (but instead only 'process', automatically, passively - massive inputs of external stimuli).

The great demonic discovery of the 1960s was that modern people could be controlled (into damnation) by keeping them always asleep. Half the time they are asleep in a totalitarian regulated bureaucracy; and the other half in an instinctual world of primary process 'Id' fantasies (and nightmares).

And they do not want to wake-up, because of what they will find. What they will find is too overwhelming to contemplate without religion, and religion is The One Thing that modern people are Sure they do not want.

But even if they had or have, religion - it is not enough; because modern religion is rotten with the same corruption that affects everything else.

The only answer is to awakening to a religion in which we each have direct and personal engagement with the divine creative mind and process - how else could we survive as individuals in a world of near-total corruption?

Fortunately, exactly this is there for the asking - everything they most need... Unfortunately, everybody is asleep, and if they begin to stir from slumber they are aggressive in their attempt to resume unconsciousness.

What they want is only more sleep, deeper sleep, and better dreams (preferably never to wake up, preferably a blissful slide into extinction - to be on the safe side).

Unless they awaken, nothing positive can be done - because anything positive done must be with consent and indeed active agreement and effort. They cannot awaken unless they want to wake. They show no signs of wanting to wake.

Well - Because God loves us, people will get what they want - but what they want, won't be what they expect. This is not a threat - simply that God cannot override Man's agency (even if he wanted to, which he does not).

What we insist upon, in our freedom, will be; but it will be what we really insist upon - and not merely what we unreflectively and dishonestly 'say to ourselves'.

Tuesday, 13 June 2017

First we need to look-within - introspect - and that is difficult for most people. Which means we need to want to look within before it can be attained - want it enough to persevere.

Once Introspection is attained then there is the possibility of Intuition.

Intuition is a process - it is thinking with the real-true-divine Self. It is the most fundamental thinking of which we are capable; compared with which the great mass of what we call thinking is merely passive 'processing'.

Most of our thinking is 'caused', automatic, un-thinking - that is, it is 'programmed' by our environment and experiences - but the real-true-divine thinking is itself a cause and has no cause - it is a spontaneous origin coming from nothing prior (that is because it is divine, and that is what divine is).

But real-true-divine thinking is not just some different kind of process that happens to be uncaused - it is participating in reality, which means it is intrinsically true.

(Real-true-divine thinking is Freedom; it is indeed the only Freedom - the only time when we our-selves are agent, because autonomous from being-caused.)

So when we are thinking intuitively, our thinking is true; intrinsically true, necessarily true - as well as being creative. It is true because it participates in reality, it is creative because it is uncaused - and these attributes are indivisible because they all are consequences of its nature.

Let us call this real-true-divine thinking Imagination - using Coleridge's distinction of Imagination in contrast to 'Fancy' - which is merely passive, caused, secondary and not-true because relating to not-real things. Fancy is merely a product of normal, automatic processing, an output rearranged from inputs...

But when we define Imagination as the primary, creative thinking that participates in reality; we can see that Imagination is intrinsically valid.

Imagination is indeed primary - it is not merely useful or expedient, Imagination is knowledge.

Imagination is indeed the only knowledge - only that which is imagined (in the way and sense described above) is real and true; and other forms of thinking are not.

In normal discourse, Imagination is synonymous with 'imaginary' i.e. untrue, unreal - but now it is apparent that Imagination is our divine selves thinking in the universal realm of reality: Imagination is knowing.

Monday, 12 June 2017

1. We were brought-up in the first officially post-Religious (specifically post-Christian) society in the history of the world.

(i.e. The first in which religion was not, explicitly and by authority, the most important thing.)

That was our challenge. Then:

2. We failed to recognise, repent, and convert.

(And still do.)

(Note: The Baby Boom generation I take to be approximately those born between 1945 and 1975. By post-Christian - I mean to reference that the mainstream, official and media public discourse and culture was - inflecting from the mid-fifties onwards and accelerating to completion - utilitarian, secular and excluding of Christian assumptions.)

When the British lost their belief in Christianity, they became victims of the national characteristic of being practical and common sensical.

Because when this characteristic loses ultimate hope and divine context; and reverts to materialist hedonism; then being 'pragmatic' means perceiving oneself as utterly powerless in the face of officialdom, bureaucracy, mass media and corporations and therefore doomed to obedience and conformity to their wishes.

If mortal life is all there is; and if - in this life - you know that (in the end...) you are outnumbered and out-gunned, and therefore you must and will (eventually) conform to the demands of power.

And when you deny any possible reality greater than such conformity, then there is no reason to think; and British people don't think - indeed they are extremely hostile to thinking.

The British are masters of pre-emptive conformity (because, what is the point?...)

By this I mean that there is considerable anger or fear at the prospect of thinking-through moral and spiritual matters to see whether current ideas are coherent, what their motivations might be... There is an aggressive uninterest in establishing what is really going on, where things are going and 'what I really think' about what is going on and where.

I think this is because British people perceive themselves as in a hopeless situation, now and until extinction at death - so any deep thinking can only waste time and energy, and make matters worse; by introducing futile discontent or despair or attracting the malign attention of authority.

Therefore, there is a single-minded and rather irritable strategic pursuit of pleasure and distraction in order not to think.

At root is rooted despair. Nothing really matters, reality is merely-material, and nothing 'I' can do will make any real difference to anything'.

Consequently, the British - who used to be renowned foes of arbitrary authority and totalitarianism; independent and eccentric - are now mostly short-termist, selfish and cowardly deep-conformists - who are living in denial of the resentment-motivated totalitarian society they have willed upon themselves - and who cannot even imagine any better way of thinking, feeling and living.

And, if life really-is as the ubiquitous atheists conceive it, then why not?

Sunday, 11 June 2017

British institutions are all too-big, waaay too big (except when they are collapsing - and begging to be taken-over by the state management).

This has happened especially over the past couple of decades. All UK universities have quadrupled in size or more - and the teaching classes within them have trebled (more buildings of all types - except for teaching facilities!). Hospitals likewise; schools, and pretty much everything. Professions (law, medicine, academics, scientists, bishops!...) have trebled or more, with massive decline in motivation and vocation and ability; and become permeated with part-timers who regard themselves primarily as for-hire functionaries.

Too may people indifferent, alienated, uninvolved.

The world is vast and mediocre - and always the shadow reality of bureaucracy.

Well, on the other side the previous state of affairs was far from perfect, and could never be really satisfactory; people could never really be satisfied by life as part of an institution - even a small, self-governing and elite.

Smaller is indeed more-beautiful; but a small village, college, school, factory, nation... is not really beautiful in any unqualified fashion.

Still all that has gone and we are left bereft - we are on-our-own now (most of us); life is a matter of gigantic bureaucracies (wo-)manned by mediocre drones and our-selves.

So be it; this is the hand we have been dealt; this is the world we must live-in like it or not.

That self needs to be found, sustained, strengthened; and not by institutional means by by direct contact with the divine - that's what we must do if we want anything other than a life dedicated to obliterative hedonism and distraction.

And, come to think on it; that it very likely what we ought to be doing anyway!

Not that this life is or ought to be solitary - but that 'soceity' is not going to support, but rather to subvert and corrupt, anything Good and creative that we are trying to do.

The mind is free: thinking is free - so long as it is our real and divine mind; and that mind is intrinsically creative; and we need to revel-in and explore that freedom, and be our own judges and enjoyers of the genuine creativity which eventuates from such living.

In this instance (and not by accident) what we must do and what we need to do are coincident.

Friday, 9 June 2017

Back in 2010-11 especially, I was reading Father Seraphim Rose a lot - especially in relation to the End Times: that era of the world in which events move towards the end of this reality and the second coming of Christ.

The data of this is unknown and indeed unknowable - but the fact of us living in the End Times has been apparent for about 200 years, in a broad consensus across thinking Christians whom I respect.

One aspect is the corruption of human institutions, including the church; and the 'antichrist' phenomenon by which evil masquerades as Good: in other words persons and organisations that have evil motivations and intentions, deliberately and explicitly adopt and emphasise some good attributes in order to deceive Christians, and enlist their cooperation.

This is now very familiar from global political groupings, charities, NGOs and the like; but perhaps especially in the mainstream Christian churches - the current Archbishop of Canterbury (Justin Welby) is an exceptionally clear example.

But the meaning of the End Times for Christians is worth pondering - because the message is that there is no safe way to be a Christian.

Actually, this has always been the case - because Christianity cannot go to any extreme. But the fact that the churches are corrupted, and mostly from the top down, means that they will be organised such as to do net evil. A Christian who joins a church and then does what it says will - probably - be led away from Christianity and into de facto apostasy.

Yet of course, all the old strictures against Christians going-it-alone still apply! Several major churches assert (without much conviction, sometimes) that there is no salvation to be had outside of their membership and ministrations.Yet, all honest churchmen will freely admit than being inside, in and of itself does no good either - and there have always been acknowledged exceptions when the church was not vital.

What is vital to keep in mind is that God is the creator and our loving Father - hence it is inconceivable he would leave any one of his children without the means of salvation and the ability to discern it - IF our motivations are genuine.

Motivations are (almost) everything!

That seems to be the lesson of the End Times. Surface appearances, and indeed actions - mean very little by comparison. Bad motivations will contaminate any organisation and anybody; good motivation will win salvation and theosis in the end.

But of course the problem is in discerning motivations! Especially in these latter days; the surface of things is deceptive; there is more dishonesty than honesty - and what is most deceptive is that truth is cunningly mixed with lies to be maximally misleading.

There is no escape from the absolute requirement for individual judgement as the basis for life: this seems to be the great lesson of the End Times.

Nonetheless, if we work on the genuineness of our motivations; trying, failing and self-correcting; ensuring we learn from experience; then we have been given everything we need to navigate to where we want-and-need to be.

Thursday, 8 June 2017

Since nothing is random or uncaused, and God is our loving Father; and since this modern world is a spiritual desert - then why are we here-and-now?

Why were we placed here, why - perhaps - did we choose to be placed here and at this most unspiritual and antireligious of times?

What possible spiritual benefit can a modern life bring us?

The answer, in a nutshell is: Living here and now compels us to reach inward to our true, divine self; because other (past) sources of Christian guidance are (for nearly all of the people in the world) either absent or corrupted.

We must become active agents, we must become spiritually - Christianly - autonomous to a degree not seen before.

*

Our faith tells us that God would not allow any of his beloved children to be placed in this era and situation unless there was a very good reason: something of which we, personally, have great need.

Yet this situation is one in which the Christian religion is absent (from many parts of the world), or essentially abandoned and corrupted (in the developed nations). All the usual sources of guidance are tainted - tradition, scripture, hierarchical authority, philosophy... all are much more likely to do us harm than good if we go to what is most available and accept it uncritically.

We can get nowhere without discernment.

Therefore spiritual passivity is - for us, here and now - ruled-out.

When the human aspects are all tainted or unobvious, then a policy of subordination and obedience are much more likely to do us harm than good; because we would probably be serving the Enemy rather than God.

*

In modernity we are brought to a state of utter isolation of our selves, and a loss of confidence in the reality of the world and of that self which is all we can experience. And our self and the world is dead, inert, passive and perceived as unliving - an accident, merely an illusion or delusion of our own limitations. We cannot perceive God, Jesus, angels; and even other people are merely shadowy entities justified only be the comfort or pleasures they provide.

We have so decisively lost the ability to know the external environment, that we regard it as a product of our minds; yet our minds are (in mainstream understanding) merely temporary, contingent, arbitrary collections of brain circuits - unreliable, prone to malfunction and doomed to extinction.

This is the state of nihilism when nothing is really-real and despair is inevitable and ineradicable.

*

So why are we here and now?

When there is no reliable external guidance, we must look within: and must means must, because there is no alternative.

Our Loving Father, the Creator would not have placed us here unless we had the resources to attain salvation and to make steps towards theosis (becoming more divine).

Since these resources are not to be found outside us, then everything we need must be found within - and by invisible, spiritual means of communication.

Specificially, what we need to begin is found within, and everything else follows as consequnces.

*

We must look within to find and feel our internal spiritual compass - that which is divine and eternal within each of us; that in us which is a child of God (still merely a child, but certainly that!).

Once we have located that inner reality; then - and only then - we can look outside; look (that is) not by our senses but directly to the world of spirit: open our real selves to to direct knowing and personal revelation from God, and the personal friendship of Jesus Christ.

*

That is why you and I are here and now; because what we personally most need, is to learn to find God within us.

Modernity is, indeed, a harsh spiritual lesson - but presumably that was the only kind of lesson that you and I were capable of learning.

(Earlier people in earlier generations, or people in different parts of the world, have other things that they need to learn . I am here talking about a reason why living in The West, the developed nations - is the best realistically-possible thing for some people; people such as you and me.)

And of course this is a lesson each and every one of us absolutely needs to learn if we are ever to develop from the passive state of being immature, externally-driven, dependent-children of God into what he hope for us to become: active, agent, autonomous grown-up 'friends' of God (and ultimately perhaps spiritual parents in our own right); at a level where we can fully participate - Son or Daughter of God - in the great and endless divine work of love and creation.

On the one hand an ambience of restless activity, financial and emotional insecurity, and growing social and cultural fragmentation; and on the other the 'still centre' of the great cathedrals, the rugged coastline, the lakes and mountains, and the ramparts, hill-forts and 'tors' of pre-Christian antiquity. William Blake called this second aspect 'Albion', and it is his evocation of the primordial spiritual essence of this land that animates both his poetry and his painting and accounts, I believe, for his enduring popularity. This is the eternal Britain, the true Britain. It has always been here and always will be. Sometimes it is visible, other times not...http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/a-deeper-reality.html

Wednesday, 7 June 2017

The literal insanity of mainstream public discourse, and the lack of insight of this fact, suggests that Man without religion is non-viable.

To put matters another way - religion is the most important thing in the human world.

Of course, a few individuals, in the short term, can survive atheism mentally intact; but there is no evidence at all that this is a possibility for human societies over more than a few decades - then the signs of insanity (incoherence, exitinction) become more-and-more obvious... or they would do so if loss of insight was not itself a prime sign of insanity.

So insanity shields us from knowledge of our own insanity, because insanity destroys insight as much as it destroys judgement - it affects the whole mode of thinking.

How, then, do we know we, as a society, are insane?

1. By applying older judgements, from the time before Men became insane - reading old books, talking to non-modern people...

2. By looking at the basic biological viability of atheist societies in terms of reproduction, demographics, response to direct and immediate threats, scale of priorities ... Compare societies and groups that are biologically viable, with the modern atheist societies that are not...

3. By reflecting on how we feel about Life. Insane people are almost always miserable - dysphoric, despairing, desperate... almost all of the time. Even the euphoric frenzy of mania is brittle, and crashes into suicidal self-destruction with a high frequency. Is there hope?

In conclusion - religion is the most important thing.

Religion is necessary for long term motivation, for social coherence, for purpose, and to enable the individual to be a part of the whole.

Since religion is necessary, if or when humans either dispense with religion or else place it anything lower than first in priority; then they as individuals and their societies will begin to fall apart and spiral towards alienation, purposelessness, inability to perceive or reason what is important, cowardice (i.e. short-term selfishness), desperation and all the rest of it.

Modernity is the experiment of Man living without Religion. The experiment has been running for several generations.

But the experiment of modernity has deprived modern people of the motivation, honesty and ability to evaluate the results of the experiment - by the always changing criteria of modernity, modernity sees no alternative to itself...

Conclusion: Religion is objectively necessary; and, by one kind of reasoning, therefore true. If you are not religious you are living in error. If you are not religious then you need to become religious. The question you must settle is not whether you should be religious, but which religion you will adopt.

Tuesday, 6 June 2017

The mass media, who are - after all, bastions of the Establishment, and the prime origin and focus of strategic evil in The West - are currently encouraging the English people to mutilate themselves with tattoos, as being an authentic and constructive response to the wave of terrorism (itself unfolding as a direct and intended consequnce of decades of purposive and coordinated laws and policies).

The British ruling Establishment has therefore created a passive and self-hating population, is unleashing lethal terror upon them, and is now channeling the response into public rituals and permanently-displayed symbols of passivity and self-hatred.

Self-mutilation as a response to emotional trauma is indeed a perfect example of exactly what 'they' want from 'us'.

As a psychiatrist, I used to see people with Personality Disorders who did just the same thing: cut and scar themselves whenever they felt bad. We tried, mostly ineffectually, to stop them doing this, since it was recognised as being at best manipulative, and at worst fuelling a down-cycle of self-loathing headed at suicide.

It is therefore entirely appropriate that the mainstream media should be encouraging this mental pathology; but it is nonetheless, beneath contempt that they do so.

And those who go along with it, get tattoos, and boast of the fact, and egg-on others to do likewise; they too are contemptible.

Such extremity of depravity - so openly-endorsed, encouraged, celebrated - is repellant; and the best part of all-of-us feels this, at a visceral level.

Yet it is precisely that we are being urged into violating our own spontaneous taboos, and the shocked frisson consequent, that makes approved mass self-mutilation such an effective means of corruption and subordination.

Of course, (Thanks be!) Christian repentance can wash our souls clean; even when the skins remain stained and tainted. But repentance requires admission of wilful error and prohibits seeking approval, even covert approval - or else it is not repentance but instead covert pride.

Monday, 5 June 2017

This insightful piece from Luke Torrisi in Australia observes the profound state of demotivation and hopelessness that is the consequence of many generations of increasingly-totalitarian secular Leftism in Britain: the country that first invented the ideology.

The consequence is a state of semi-delirious idiocy and continuous low-grade insanity that has inverted common sense, ignores direct personal experience, refuses to connect the dots and is unable to grasp the simplest reality - for example that the ruling Establishment (in all social domains) is actively-hostile to the people; and is pursuing a strategy of total-control, moral inversion and induced permanent chaos.

On the other hand this pathetic (in several senses) situation has been both caused and permitted by the nation's mass and near-complete Christian apostasy;so that, as a population, we almost-completely lack courage, motivation and any sense of direction.

Because the cause is spiritual; there is no chance at all of any positive change without first a spiritual awakening.

Therefore if, like me, you want to do something constructive - then that 'something' ought to be in the realm of Christian evangelism - primarily and as a matter of urgency.

Politics is utterly useless - because there is no basis for it. One cannot expect positive and powerful change from a society of de facto drones and hedonists. The British - specifically the English - must be inspired by ultimate hope.

And must means must.

***

London: Apocalypse at Airstrip One
Anarcho-tyranny on the streets of London, 4 June 2017. By Luke Torrisi.

I have been conditioned by the world of fiction to regard London as an impregnable fortress. In Skyfall, MI6 could be blown up by terrorists yet keep on working from its underground alternate headquarters, with “M” and “Q” safe and well. Despite its title, in London Has Fallen, with heads of state dropping like flies, the terrorists infiltrating the highest levels of security (three cheers for diversity programmes!), and international terror masterminds owning whole buildings necessary for the take-over plan to function (now that is just wild fantasy fiction isn’t it?) – the good guys prevail (with a little American help).

To get to the stage where you have a militarised police filtering the population with detailed searches, ‘hand-on-heads’ type containment of ‘innocents’ with the appearance of martial law, one must turn to 28 Weeks Later. In that doomsday classic, the UK has undergone a literal ‘zombie apocalypse’ scenario at the hands of the Rage Virus. Even then, London is still the safe haven – albeit militarised – for all the non-flesh-eaters who want a break from the incessant running.

As it turns out, fact is stranger than fiction. All it took for the zombie apocalypse was three Islamics in a van, armed with knives. We’ve all been saturated with the details and statistics of the carnage, we’ve all been subjected to overdoses of the predictable hand-wringing by the political classes and elites, we’ve all seen the news turning a handful of interviews into hours of coverage to the point where we can lip-synch the dialogue.

Of all the approved media coverage, the images that sit most starkly in my mind aren’t the ones of people sitting by the curb holding bloodied cloth to their cuts and slashes. I am struck by the actions of police.
We were assured after Manchester that the police presence would be truly awesome – they couldn’t guarantee another attack wouldn’t happen, but the public was to be reassured by the show of force. We were told after London Bridge, that within 8 minutes all the terrorists were shot. There was carnage all the same.

What I noticed was an unprecedented level of aggression from police towards the general public. People were being ordered to cower under tables – under threat of police action. At one point I saw film of police getting very aggressive with those they termed ‘gawkers’ – not gawking at dead bodies – just wanting to understand the mayhem. Then I saw pictures of Londoners being sent down streets with their hands on their heads as if in a state of martial law.

I understand that in the chaos police didn’t know if they had apprehended all the culprits, that they didn’t know if more attacks were planned, that they had reason to fear that the knife attackers also carried explosives. I understand all of that. However, truth be told – what I saw (not being there of course, and having to appreciate the situation via media reports) was a police force cracking down on its own civilians with a militaristic zeal because it didn’t know what else to do.

I was especially touched by one account from a man who witnessed a girl being stabbed multiple times. He wanted to help her, he looked for a weapon, a chair or table – but everything was ‘bolted down’ and he felt totally helpless. The constant refrain from witnesses was ‘helpless’. The terrorists walked into bars and restaurants and just started stabbing. Some reported throwing pint glasses at the attackers, but despite outnumbering them hundreds to one, despite being attacked with only blades, the public felt helpless and the injury toll mounted. It was police bullets that ended the fray – I can only imagine the toll had the terror had been allowed to carry on for a few more minutes.

Again, truth be told, I can’t imagine three Englishmen walking through Beirut, Baghdad, Tehran or even Constantinople on a stabbing spree and getting very far. In fact, I can’t imagine them even engaging in a swearing fit or ‘racist tirade’ in such cities and avoiding hospitalisation. I imagine that the average Briton would be terrified of standing up in a cafe in Cairo and bellowing obscenities about Mohammed – they would genuinely fear for their very lives. I imagine that an Egyptian Muslim standing up in a London bar and swearing obscenities about Her Majesty or Christ or the English generally, would be met with a stunned silence, a cluster of filming smart phones, perhaps – in the right area – even agreement and applause.

I am not suggesting here that: I’d prefer London be more like a Middle Eastern city, that the English are weak, that the London attack lacked the presence of local heroes or even that I’d fare any better in the same position as most of the witnesses. All I note is that for some reason, which I won’t be attempting to analyse or even diagnose here, the average Englishman feels helpless in ways that I (and most of you if you’ll be honest with yourselves) don’t see in many other parts of the world. He feels helpless in ways that we can’t imagine our fathers or grand-fathers feeling helpless.

This is all very anecdotal, somewhat emotional, and perhaps even tinged with idealism and nostalgia – but instinctively, we all know there’s something to it. This idea that I am grasping at like a blind man in fog is the same one many others know is out there and are challenged to describe too.
When I see the reaction of the police and security forces towards the English people, all I see is the underscoring of this sense of helplessness.

I recall the words of Roger Scuton, who writes in his ‘eulogy’ for England:
“The police force was not an arm of the central government, but a local organisation, responsive to the county councils. The ‘bobby’ himself was trained as a friend of the community he served, and the sign of this was that he was armed only with a notebook and a comic tin whistle. he knew the people on his beat, and took a benign and paternal interest in their welfare. Children went to him when they were lost; strangers asked him directions, and everybody greeted him with a smile.”

Earlier, Scruton notes that:
“[w]hen a felon transgressed it was not the state but the law which pursued him, and the essential goodness of the law was symbolised by the fact that policemen carried no arms. Policemen were chosen for their height, with hats that emphasised their superior stature. But they were representatives of authority, not power – the authority of a law that stood above all earthly powers and could never be reduced by them. In popular films the police confronted gun toting criminals with the same phlegmatic confidence as radiated from those idealised schoolroom portraits of General Gordon of Khartoum, in which the General faced the spears of savages with a calm acceptance of his fate, as safe and unflustered in death as he would have been on the thickly carpeted stairwell of his London club, conscious that his authority was only enhanced by his lack of power and that one day, thanks to his quiet sacrifice, order would be reimposed.”

I am not sure I see either of these images when I scrutinise those I receive filtered through the media. It would seem that a generation of diversity programmes, heterogenising of community and state centralisation, has produced a different effect. The image of General Gordon remains apt – because now it would appear that the Mahdi’s troops are on the rampage.

I can’t help but think that the response to theses attacks; pink balloons, flowers and candle vigils, and a rock concert – won’t be the magic panacea everyone is hoping for. Rather it will entrench whatever this phenomenon is that is turning the stiff upper lip into a quivering one.

The Englishman is increasingly looking confused and helpless, he is looking brow-beaten by those the State assigns to protect him, he is looking the way I imagine the souls of Airstrip One to look.

What frightens me the most, outside of the immediate carnage, is the erasure I detect of the quintessentially English character that I know and love. It flows within my veins, it is the stuff of my ancestry. I do not want to become an eccentric repository of it because I am cast to the antipodes, shielded by the prophylaxis of distance.

Just because the buildings still stand, it doesn’t mean that London hasn’t fallen. She is truly slain when General Gordon sits rocking on the third step, weeping and confused, not knowing what to do.

– Luke Torrisi is a retired legal practitioner and now an academic researcher and host of Carpe Dieum, Sydney’s only explicitly Traditionalist and Paleoconservative radio programme

Post Scriptum:
Since writing this earlier today – the news headlines (here at least) run with ‘heroes emerge from the London terror attack’ and it just convinces me more than Scruton’s Eulogy is wise. There was a police officer who took on all three terrorists with just a baton – and was wounded extensively. He actually is a hero. Unfortunately the word is being abused when applied to many others. There was a Romanian baker who clobbered one of them with a basket – that takes a fair bit of guts and genuine bravery – but again, the twitter-verse comes alive as he is exalted as a ‘migrant hero’ who might be thrown out because of Brexit! As for those who are heroes because they called out to warn people, gave someone a bandage, asked a person if they were okay … that just shows a deformed view of what a hero actually is. I note one ‘hero’ applied a tourniquet to a person caught by a bullet in the crossfire … seems that the wounded weren’t all victims of terrorists.